


Not forgetting you

by Fogfire



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 11:50:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16387241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fogfire/pseuds/Fogfire





	Not forgetting you

“I’ve always meant to ask you, but…”

“Don’t!” You interrupt with a glare, “Just don’t.”

You hear Sam laughing somewhere behind you and there’s a low chuckle humming through your comm. Must be Tony. Clint doesn’t back off though. He never backs off.

“But seriously,” he starts again, not even looking at you. He’s not looking down either, show-off that he is, shooting arrows while seemingly checking the sky for rain clouds, “Why do you wear that ugly armor?”

You fire your crossbow without answering. You don’t want to answer. But then Clint turns his head to smile at you, wiggling his eyebrows like the idiot he is. And that’s pretty much the moment you fall in love with him. And also the moment before you decide you will push him off this damned rooftop.

-

You wear a armor because you want to. A breastplate because you once got stabbed right beside the heart - so far the closest call you’ve ever had - and a small but effective plating for your knees and shins, elbows, and forearms. There is only so much sliding across dirty floors a girl can do before her clothes are damaged, her skin is scraped and scars litter your skin.

By the time you’re five years a team member and three years into the best thing of your life aka Clint, you’re thinking of getting yourself a helmet. Not an ugly one like Steve likes to carry around, you like to go with the time. But you never get around to getting one. And that bites you in the ass.

-

Your forehead is wet, but it’s not water, the sticky liquid running into your eyes. You feel like you’re about to get sick and tired, yeah, you feel tired. There’s noise around you, too much of it to comprehend it, like a river of sounds running past you as you stand by and watch.

Something soft touches the inside of your arm, there’s a familiar smell in your nose and a few words make their way over to you. “Hey Bug, I’m here. You’re gonna be fine.”

What weird words, you think to yourself and manage to lift your eyelids the faintest bit, just enough to see a flutter of red hair and a smile that brings a feeling of remembrance in you. And then you let yourself sink into the darkness like one might sink into the mattress after a terribly long day.

Mama will wake me when it’s time to get up for school, you think and that’s the last thing you remember of this fateful day.

-

Sunlight streams through the windows, a really old TV hangs in the upper left corner of the room, the sound turned off. It shows an episode of Friends that seems familiar to you, but you watch with interest as the story unfolds, reading from their lips.

“Hey Bug,” A hand touches yours and you turn your head to look at the man that has approached you, “How do you feel today?”

“Good,” you say as you’re trying to be polite, “Are you working for the hospital?”

He looks taken aback, opening his mouth and closing it again, looking for words. “I’m…”

“Did you manage to get my mom on the phone? She’s always busy, I know, but I’m sure she could take care of me at home.”

“Oh, Bug,” he says, pushing out a soft breath, almost like a sigh, “Your mom-”

“Is on the way,” a pretty red-haired woman says next to him, smiling down at you, “She said she’d get you after she closes the store.”

“That’s great,” You say, “I don’t want to fall too far back in school. And the hospital bills won’t pay themselves.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the red-haired woman says, “I’m going to take care of that. I’m Natasha, by the way.”

“Y/N,” you shake her hand, “Thank you.”

The guy’s still standing next to her, looking down at you with an unreadable expression. Then you notice the hearing aids and sign your name at him. He looks like he might cry any second and you wonder if you said something wrong.

“Clint,” Natasha grabs his arm, pulling him back, “Let’s get a bit of fresh air.”

You don’t watch them leave but turn back towards the TV, falling asleep in the sunlight that breaks in the clear bag attached to your chair. A clear bag containing a light blue liquid that makes its way into your veins, drop by drop by drop.

—

Another day, another dream you wake up from.

There’s a man sitting next to your bed. He looks tired, the exhaustion altering his features to make him even older than he probably is.

You look at the bag next to you, marvel at the beautiful color of the liquid inside. What gives it such a blue shade?

There are voices, calm and cool, like a breeze of autumn air that cools the skin on the last hot days of summer.

You’re too tired to grasp the words, let them fly around your head like beautiful butterflies.

“Dementia” is a blue one with black dots and “Head Trauma” a lilac one. “Irreversible” is stark red and “Sorry” dark green. Then there’s silence, only broken by a hiccuping, wet sounding sob and you raise your head to look for the one that feels so much sadness.

It’s the man that had been sitting next to your bed.

He’s crying, a perfectly manicured hand grasping his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry Clint,” a voice mumbles over and over as you watch the man cry. You want to tear your eyes away, give him the privacy he deserves, but you can’t.

You feel curious about his fate. Maybe his wife died. But the one consoling him is a woman his age. Maybe he’s sick? Or his mother?

You think and think in circles, not noticing the darkness creeping onto you until you fall asleep in the middle of a thought.

—

You wake up to the sunlight caressing your face just like the fingers of a loved one. You breathe, in and out, looking around you, trying to take everything in.

The bed you lie in reminds you of nursing homes and there’s crochet work all over the room. You look down at your hands but they don’t look like that of an 80-year-old woman. Just as you’re starting to panic the door opens and a nurse steps in, smiling at you.

“Good morning. Are we ready for breakfast?”

“Where am I?” You blurt out, “What happened?”

“Oh dear,” she says in the voice of someone that has gone through this often enough, “Everything is just alright. You’ve caught a bit of sickness and we’re here to get you back on your feet. You just wait.”

She talks to you as she hands you your breakfast and a few pills you have to swallow. You stare at them in suspicion and she smiles sweetly. “They are for your blood pressure,” she tells you, “and other things that we need to work on. But I know you have a hard time swallowing pills. Therefore we have all the important vitamins for your recovery in this infusion,” she smiles and shows you a bag filled with a marvelously shade of blue. She hangs it up, switching it with an empty one.

As the day trickles on, the liquid pours into your vein, drop by drop by drop and you feel yourself getting lulled into a dazy state by the sheer nothingness that happens around you.

“What a nice day we had today,” the nurse says as she adjusts your pillow in the evening, switching the infusion bag yet again. You look at the beautiful shade of blue that’s trickling into your veins and can’t help but think that it’s true.

—

“What is this?” You ask, stepping out of the car and onto the soft green grass. It smells like nature and nature only there’s an old farmhouse in front of you, complete with a front porch, stables, and fields stretching out behind it.

“Do you like it?” Clint shuts the car door behind him, pushing his hands into his pockets, sending you one of his half grins.

“Sure I do, but-”

“Would you like to live here?” He asks and that question alone knocks the breath out of you.

You laugh to get yourself a second longer to think before you answer.

“Sure, if I wasn’t part of the team, or working as-”

“And in the holidays?”

“Clint?” You ask, your voice low and almost threatening, “Did you buy the farmhouse?”

“What if I did? Hypothetically?”

“I’d call you an idiot?”

He pouts. “An idiot? Really? I wanted to do something nice for you!”

Now you laugh wholeheartedly. “Clint, I’ve lived in the City all my life. What exactly made you think that a farmhouse was exactly what I wanted for our second anniversary?”

“When you were five,” he says, his voice casual, as he walks past you, strolling towards the stables, “You wanted a horse. Any pet would have been fine, but you really, really wanted a horse.”

“Yeah, I know, I told you that. But we couldn’t have one, because pets weren’t allowed in that tiny apartment.”

“And when you come back from jogging you always complain how you want to go for a run without nothing but nature around you once, just once.”

“Yeah, but-”

“And when Steve said he’d love to have a tiny garden of his own you had that twinkle in your eye that you always get when you have an idea…”

You breathe in and out, taking in what that means.

“So you got me a house.”

“So I got you a house,” he turns and wiggles his eyebrows at you, “And Nat already said she wants the room that goes out to the backside.”

-

You wake with a start, staring at the cream-colored ceiling above you. Something doesn’t feel right. Something really doesn’t feel right.

You take your surroundings in, a nursing home bed, crochet work, an infusion stand next to your bed. The door opens and a nurse steps in.

“Good morning. Are we ready for breakfast?”

“Where am I?” You blurt out, “What happened?”

“Oh dear,” she says in the voice of someone that has gone through this often enough, “Everything is just alright. You’ve caught a bit of sickness and we’re here to get you back on your feet. You just wait.”

She talks to you as she hands you your breakfast and a few pills you have to swallow. You stare at them in suspicion and she smiles sweetly. “They are for your blood pressure,” she tells you, “and other things that we need to work on. But I know you have a hard time swallowing pills. Therefore we have all the important vitamins for your recovery in this infusion,” she smiles and shows you a bag filled with a marvelously shade of blue. She hangs it up, switching it with an empty one.

Then she smiles down at you as if you’re forgetting something important.

You look down at the breakfast she’s put in front of you. The pills, a glass of water, some oatmeal.

“Could I have a tea, maybe?” You ask, “I dreamt of a nice farmhouse today with a beautiful garden and I’d love some herbal tea.”

“Oh, of course,” she smiles at you while she talks, “But I have to be there when you swallow the pills to be sure that everything is in order.”

You grab the pills, put them in your mouth and swallow them with a glass of water, smiling at her. “Everything has to be in order,” you tell her calmly and she smiles and walks out to grab you that cup of tea.

As the door closes you put your finger in your mouth to get the pills back up, hiding them under the mattress just in time. You drink the tea, eat your breakfast and let her take you to the bathroom.

When the door closes behind her, you get to the ordeal of pulling the infusion out of your arm and getting up hour after hour to slowly empty the infusion into the toilet so that no one notices.

The day goes by slowly and you use it to think about all the things you don’t know.

What day is it? Where are you? Why are you here? What sickness do you have that the nurse won’t tell you about? And most importantly, who is the man you dreamt about?

Who is Clint and why does your heart feel like breaking when you think of him?

Two days go by with the same painstaking ordeal. So far you feel safe with your charade, but you can’t be too sure about it. And then there are the dreams you have at night and sometimes during the day when you feel too exhausted.

They are always about a man named Clint who smiles at you like he’s a kid and you’ve just come from the candy store. He likes to tickle you, likes to make stupid jokes and smells like coffee and something you can’t really place.

He likes to wiggle his eyebrows and has the absolute worst timing for it. And then there’s Nat, redhead, smiling at you as if she knows more about you than you yourself ever will. She borrows your lipsticks that you hardly use but you like them on her. She sits next to you on the couch, howling with laughter when you tell her a story of your not so glorious teenage years. She smells like sweet perfume and gunpowder and her hugs have enough warmth to get one through three winters straight.

There’s more, lying under the surface of a frozen lake that is now your mind, but the memories of these two are so warm their breath melts the ice just enough that you can see through.

They feel real and you long for them with so much force that it’s threatening to break your heart. All you want is for them to be as real as they feel to you and all you want is to forget about them in case you’re wrong.

—

Two days go by and if there’s one thing you’re certain by now is that you’re not sick. With every pill you flush down the toilet, every drop of questionable liquid you don’t allow in your veins, you regain the strength you weakly remember you had. And as far as you know, medicine shouldn’t work that way around, or does it?

But you still don’t know where you are and what is happening and even if it’s nerve-wracking there is only one thing important right now and that is patience.

Day by day goes by. You flush the pills down the toilet when the nurse has left and, after checking for security cameras, workout on the floor of the little room, intent to get back a strength you’re not sure you ever had. Your dreams say yes but when could one ever trust dreams alone?

The view from your windows tells you nothing but the time of day. There’s nothing outside but the lonely backside of an old building and the sun that tries to rise above it.

But then, one week after that one fateful dream, a guy dressed in a long white coat steps into your room. You look at him with tired eyes and greet him hello.

“Are you my doctor,” you ask with a soft voice and study his features when he smiles. The smile does not reach his cold eyes.

He asks you questions that seem nice at first but turn confusing the more he asks.

He never asks if you remember, just mentions names that mean nothing to you.

Until he mentions one that does.

He stops and smiles and you realize that your face must have betrayed your fake nonchalance.

“Clint,” you repeat, fighting to stay calm. You say the name again as if to test it, “The name sounds familiar, do I know him?”

“It shines up in your records,” he says, “Apparently he was engaged to you?”

“Engaged?” You ask, not even faking your confusion, “But I don’t have a ring?”

“Well,” the doctor says, “Your files mention a head trauma and bruises that are typical for fights. Could it have been Clint…” He trails off and you want to say no, because your dreams say otherwise, but you can’t be sure.

Your answer is as weak as your hope is. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry,” the doctor pats your leg and you have to fight yourself so you don’t pull away, “You are in good hands here.”

But when he leaves the nurse brings a fresh infusion set and your brain might not be trustworthy, but you’ve always had a good eyesight. And that big is definitely bigger than the last one was and the blue is just the slightest shade darker.

Whatever they’re trying to pump into your veins… They’ve just upped your dosage.

—

“Hey Bug,” a voice whispers and lips brush your forehead. A slight stubble scratches your skin and your eyes flutter open.

“Clint,” you groan, “I was sleeping.”

He smiles and wiggles his eyebrows at you. “I know. But we need to talk.”

“How late is it?”

“Not important,” he tries to grab your arm and pull you back as you search your phone. You’re faster though and groan as you catch sight of the time.

“Clint!”

“Hey, it’s important.”

“Fine,” you sit up in bed, pulling your legs towards you to sit cross-legged in front of him, “Spill.”

“I have to leave,” he says, not even trying to soften the blow, “And it might be a bit dangerous out there.”

You rub your eyes, trying to calm down before you talk, trying to get a grip of your feelings because you want to think before you speak, control your feelings before they control you.2

“How dangerous?”

“Remember Budapest?”

You take in a Breath and nod. “Fine,” you press the word through your teeth, “But if you don’t come back, I’ll come after you and kill you.”

“I’m definitely coming back.”

“You better.”

You kiss and you cling to him, more than you should, more than you want to admit, but you do. You want to hold him back but you know you shouldn’t and you know you can’t.

“I bought a phone,” he tells you when he pulls back just a little, his forehead pressing against yours, his breath ghosting over your face. He smells like toothpaste and you’re briefly reminded of your own morning breath but push the thought away as his confession seems more important.

“You did?” You ask with amusement, “A flip phone.”

“No, they break too easily,” he quips, “But I need you to remember the numbers, because it’s a special phone. I want it to be our emergency phone.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“But you love me.”

“Yeah,” you breathe out, “I actually love you a lot.”

-

You blink and stare at the ceiling, slowly lifting your hand to touch your lips. You can still feel the kiss lingering, can still smell the mintiness of his breath. And you remember, more than you’ve ever remembered anything else, a phone number that was given to you. Maybe it was years ago, maybe just a few weeks, but it’s a way to check if all this was real.

But how do you get a phone?

You start with checking the hallway, asking for a cup of tea because your throat feels raw.

You wobble on your legs a bit to make them believe you’re weaker than you are.

And then you wait two more days to make sure that they forget about it before you slip out of bed around midnight and sneak up to the lonely night nurse, knocking her out with an empty teacup. You pull her into your room and into your bed, change into her clothes in a frenzy, your heart beating faster than it has in a long time. She has no phone on her, but a small silver key and you walk through the empty hallways looking for the locker the key belongs to.

Civil clothes and a purse that contains nothing more than mint, a house key and a wallet with a single ten dollar note inside. You take it, not without feeling guilty and check the other lockers, making sure to be quick, quiet and successful.

But when you leave you have nothing more than the cash in the pocket of your jeans and clothes that are two sizes too big for you. You don’t know where you are, you don’t know what is real. But you know that you can’t get back into that bed and pretend that everything is fine either.

You walk the whole night and through the morning, only stopping once to alter your appearance in a public toilet, stepping out looking more like a young boy than the woman someone might be looking for.

You walk through the city as if you have somewhere to be, taking everything in as the morning arrives and there are more and more people on the street.

You steal a newspaper and check the date but it doesn’t really help when you don’t even know what you’ve forgotten. It could be years, month or weeks.

You walk and walk and walk, learning hardly more than that it’s spring, the majority of people talks English and an apple a day is definitely not enough for your stomach.

But when night falls you find a place to hide away for the night and clutch the phone in your hand that you stole. Borrowed, Steve would say, you think and wonder where that thought just came from.

You carefully choose the numbers, remembering them one by one and listen to each ring.

No one picks up.

“Hello,” you say nonetheless, fighting against the desperation settling in, “This is Bug. I don’t really know where I am or anything else, but if you are or know someone named Clint, tell him that I’m trying to remember. Just… maybe call me back if you can, whoever you are. I hope you know more than I do.”

You end the call and press the phone against your chest, ashamed of yourself.

A part of yourself tells you that you’re better than that. You surely don’t know how to pickpocket or break lockers open without reason.

Or maybe you’ve just had a bad youth, you try to reason, clutching the phone and telling yourself that everything will look better in the morning. It just has too.

—

Clint shuffles into his room, dropping his bag on the bad and fighting his exhaustion long enough to empty it’s content, tossing everything washable into one corner of the room and the rest onto the small desk. His phone, his emergency phone… He picks the latter up again, pressing the button to light up the screen. Nothing. He sighs and awkwardly fumbles through his drawers, looking for a charging cord only to plug it in under his bed, hidden from plain sight.

“Clint?” A voice asks above the bed and he pulls back, holding up a pair of socks he’s found under there.

Nat smiles, exhaustion on her face and worry in her eyes.

“Practice tomorrow?”

“If you manage to wake me up.”

She smiles and closes the door behind her. She doesn’t mention you and neither does he. It’s easier to forget that way.

But not easy enough, he thinks as exhaustion pulls him in, never easy enough.

.

He almost forgets in the morning and Nat would be proud of him, proud that he moves on, but he feels guilty when he turns back at the door to pull the phone out from under the bed to turn it on. He needs to check, needs to know that he’s doing all he can, even if it will be futile.

The phone lights up as and vibrates in his hand. He looks down at it, disinterested almost, only to see words he’d never thought he’d see.

One (1) missed call from unknown number. To listen to the recorded message…

He presses down so hard he’s almost afraid he’ll break the phone. Almost.

“You have one message…” A mechanical sounding voice says, it clicks and the room is suddenly filled with a voice he hasn’t heard for too long, a voice he will never forget.

“Hello… This is Bug. I don’t really know where I am or anything else, but if you are or know someone named Clint, tell him that I’m trying to remember. Just… maybe call me back if you can, whoever you are. I hope you know more than I do.”

He listens to it again. And again.

And then the facts kick in and he rips his door open, his voice bellowing through the hallway.

“Nat! Steve! Sam! Everyone, now, Emergency meeting!”

And with shaking hands he presses down to call you back.

-

The phone vibrates against your chest, waking you up. You jump and look around but you’re still alone, covered by newspaper and the city hasn’t woken up yet.

You look down and see the call, accept it without think.

“Hey Bug?” A soft voice asks. You hiccup.

“Are you Clint?” You ask.

“Yeah, I’m Clint,” he answers, his voice shaky, “Do you remember me?”

“A bit more every day,” You answer truthfully, “Do you… Can you… I dreamt about the farm.”

You hear a breathy laugh, followed by him mumbling. “Nat, she remembers the farm.”

“Ask her where she is,” a female voice says and before you can stop yourself you mumble a “Tell Nat I said hi,” It sounds like someone the person you used to be would have said.

You tell him where you are, hiding behind a supermarket that is soon to open, in a city that you don’t recognize.

“Detroit,” Clint tells you, “Your grandma lived in that nursing home and it was the only thing you could remember.”

You want to ask more, want to say more when there’s a shrill sound and the line goes dead. As you look down at the phone in shock, you see nothing more but a message that this phone has been blocked because of theft. At just the right timing.

You know you can’t leave this supermarket, because this will be the first place where they will look. You also know that staying in one place for too long is dangerous.

Your gut tells you to move, so you move. It has kept you safe so far.

There’s a coffee shop right across the street that’s opening right now and you buy the cheapest item on the menu and ask if you can use the bathroom to clean up. You stay as long as it is acceptable, eyes locked on the supermarket. The parking lot slowly starts to fill with cars. The barista harrumphs behind the counter, sending you pointing looks. You leave and circle the streat, telling yourself that you will recognize Clint from your dreams, and Nat looks familiar too. There’s a newspaper stand on the far side of the street and you buy a copy so you can sit on a bench and hide behind it. You read but it makes your head hurt. That is until you reach the second to last page and see Clint looking back at you.

The words blur before your eyes as you try to read, so you concentrate on the picture. There’s Clint, Natasha, a guy with dark hair and a goatee and others. You try to memorize their faces, try to connect them to the blurry pictures in your head.

It’s mildly successful, but at least you learn that you have a friend named Sam.

But when you look up from the paper you see a guy, standing across the street. You’re not sure if you’ve just caught his eye in your disheveled state, but he’s staring at you. And then he moves and without fail your gut tells you that he knows who you are. And he’s not the type you want to have that kind of information.

-

“Dammit, how many of those Supermarkets are in Detroit?” Clint asks, fighting back the desperation in his voice. Why didn’t he think of tracking her before he called her? Why didn’t he call her right after he listened to the Voicemail the first time? Why-

“Stop it,” Nat says next to him, “We’re going to find her.”

“Next Supermarket,” Friday announces and they get ready. Ready to take you home.

-

You reach the doors of the supermarket just a few seconds before your persecutor and you thank everyone you can think of - not many - for them being open. You slip inside and run, sliding behind a display of adult diapers. Not a good weapon you think and look on, ears perched.

The market is giant and void of other customers so far, a giant, dangerous maze. You listen, then you run, head down. You don’t think you can still pretend that you’re still under the influence of their drugs.

You see wine bottles and grab one, ready to through it if necessary. Not the best weapon, but better than a pack of diapers.

“Can I help you with something?” A voice asks you, too loud and too annoyed. You jump, looking at the sales clerk in front of you.

His eyes widen in shock and you turn to see your persecutor approaching, his walk steady and slow, his arms raised, pointing a gun at you.

And you’re the foolish one, holding a wine bottle as your only defensive. And it’s not even a good wine.

“Move,” the bad guy says and you wonder what he means. Forward, backward, up? You open your mouth and hear the chiming of bells signaling that someone has entered the supermarket.

Someone cries out your name and without thinking, really, you do move. You throw the wine bottle and jump to the side, hitting your head on the floor as you land but you’re up in a second, crawling away from the sound of glass shattering, cursing and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

“Bug?”

Clint finds you minutes later, hidden inside a display of dress shirts.

“Can we just go to that farm?” You ask him, “And pretend all of this didn’t happen.”

“I’d love to,” he says and stretches out his hand for you to take. He pulls you up and in his arms and carries you out and you hide your face in his shoulder so that you don’t have to look. Not at the wine bottle that burst when the bullet hit it, not at the bad guy that must have an arrow sticking out of him, not at the sales clerks looking at you like you’re the last thing they needed today - you feel kind of sorry for them.

You know, after all you’ve gone through so far, after all you remember of it, that you’re strong. You will be fine. But right now you just want to have some peace to deal with it. And that is pretty okay.

And you do look up and into the faces of those who came to your rescue, calmed by the feeling of your hand in Clint’s, knowing that even though you don’t know a lot right now, you’re not wrong about him, not even the slightest.


End file.
